Things! The Material Worlds of Humanity: Schedule and Readings

Posted at Sep 26/2007 02:56PM:
chris witmore: PLEASE NOTE: I have created a PRIVATE FORUM for all the readings. The password is, of course, the same. [link]

Week one: T., 9/11—Introduction: aims and objectives

Week two: T., 9/18—Materialist Approaches

Marx, K. 1971. Capital: Vol.1. A Critical analysis of capitalist production. (Read: Chapter 1 The Commodity, pp. 125-177) (Library has electronic copy) Also check out Google Scholar: [link] as well as the Marx & Engels Internet Archive for a non-pdf/copy-paste friendly version [link]
Marx, K. 2002. The machine verses the worker. In The Social Shaping of Technology. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (eds), Second Edition. Buckingham: Open University Press. 156-58.
- Stallybrass, P. 1998. Marx’s Coat. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces. P. Spyer (ed.) London: Routledge, pp. 183-207.
- Appadurai, A. 1986. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In The Social Life of Things. A. Appadurai (ed.). Cambridge: CUP, pp. 3-63.
Mauss, M. 1990. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: Norton. (Library has electronic copy)

Further Reading

Appadurai, A. 1994. Commodities and the politics of value, In Interpreting objects and collections. S.M. Pearce (ed.) London: Routledge. 76-91.
Mauss, M. 2006. Techniques, Technology and Civilization. N. Schlanger (ed.) Durkheim Press.

DISCUSSANTS: Michelle, Stephen, Kate, Charlotte

Week three: T., 9/25—Material culture studies: American and French Approaches

Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1993. Gesture and Speech. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Chapters 8 and 9. 237-266.
Lemonnier, P. 1992. Elements for an Anthropology of Technology. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Chapter 1 and 3. 1-24 and 51-77.
Schiffer, M. with A.R. Miller, 1999. The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behaviour, and Communication. London: Routledge. ALL (Library has electronic copy)

Further reading:

Glassie, H. 1999: Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lemonnier, P. 1993. Technical Choices: Transformations in Material Cultures since the Neolithic. London: Routledge.

DISCUSSANTS: Brad, Colin, Heidi, Alex

Week four: T., 10/2—Material culture studies/Materiality

Miller, D. 1998. Material Cultures; Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1, 3-21 and Chapter 8, 169-187.
Miller, D. 2005. Introduction. In D. Miller (ed.) Materiality. Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 1-50.
Buchli, V. 2004. Material Culture: Current Problems. In A Companion to Social Archaeology. L. Meskell and R. Preucel (eds) . Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 179-194.
Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14(1), 1-16.
Olsen, B., 2005: Scenes from a troubled engagement. Post-structuralism and material culture studies, in C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer (eds), Handbook of Material Culture. London, 85-103.

Further readings:

Buchli, V. 1995. Interpreting material culture: the trouble with text. In Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past. I. Hodder, M. Shanks, A. Alexandri, V. Buchli, J. Carman, J. Last, and G. Lucas (eds), London: Routledge, pp. 181-93.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. and E. Rochberg-Halton, 1981. The meaning of things: Domestic symbols and the self. Cambridge: CUP.
Tilley, C. 1991. Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity. London: Routledge.

DISCUSSANTS: Christy, Claudia, Michelle

Week five: T., 10/9—Goods and process: Between biographical approaches and life-cycles

Du Gay, P., S. Hall, L. Janes, H. Mackay, K. Negus, 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of The Sony Walkman. London: Sage. (Introduction, 1-7 and Introduction to each section)
- Shanks, M. 1998. The life of an artifact. Fennoscandia Archeologica 15, 15-42.
- Holtorf, C. 1998. The life-history of megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany). World Archaeology 30 (1): 23–38.
- Holtorf, C. 2002. Notes on the life history of a pot shard. Journal of Material Culture 7 (1): 49–71.
Kopytoff, I. 1986. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In The Social Life of Things. A. Appadurai (ed.), Cambridge: CUP, pp. 64–91.
- Gosden, C. and Y. Marshall (eds) 1999. The cultural biography of objects. World Archaeology 31 (2): 169-178.
Brooks, R. 2004. The Portland Vase. New York: Harper Collins. (Summarize Journey)

Further readings:

Hoskins, J. 2005. Agency, biography and objects. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer (eds), Handbook of Material Culture. London, 74-84.

DISCUSSANTS: Tom, Keffie, Ray, Carrie, Kate, Clarissa, Claudia

Week six: T., 10/16—Phenomenology

Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. The Thing and the Natural World, pp. 348-402.
Merleau-Ponty, M. 1969. The Visible and the Invisible. (tr. A. Lingis) Northwestern University Press SELECTIONS TO FOLLOW
- Tilley, C. 2004. The Materiality of Stone. Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg. Introduction 1-31.
Benjamin, W. 1973. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In H. Arendt (ed.) Illuminations. New York, pp. 217-252.
Ihde. D. 2003. If Phenomenology is an Albatross, is Post-phenomenology Possible? In Ihde, D. and Selinger E. (eds.), Chasing Technoscience. Matrix for Materiality. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 131-144.

Further reading:

Brück, J. 2005. Experiencing the past? The development of a phenomenological archaeology in British prehistory. Archaeological Dialogues 12(1) 45-72.
Johnson, M.H. 2006. On the nature of theoretical archaeology and archaeological theory. Archaeological Dialogues 13(2) 117-132.
Olsen, B. 2006. Archaeology, hermeneutics of suspicion and phenomenological trivialization. Archaeological Dialogues 13(2) 144-150.

DISCUSSANTS: Charlotte, Chris, Keffie, Kori

Week seven: T., 10/23—Heidegger: from objects to things

Heidegger, M. 1996. Being and Time. State University of New York Press, Albany. The Necessity, Structure and Priority of the Question of Being and The Worldliness of the World, 2-12 and 59-105
- Harman, G. 2002: Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Chicago: Open Court.
Heidegger, M., 1971: Poetry, language, thought, (tr. A. Hofstadter), New York. READ: The Thing, 161-184.
- Harman, G. 2005: Heidegger on Objects and Things. In Latour, B. and Weibel, P. (eds) Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 268-271.
- Rorty, R. 2005: Heidegger and the Atomic Bomb. In Latour, B. and Weibel, P. (eds) Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 274-275.

Further readings:

Benso, S. 1996. Of things face-to-face with Levinas face-to-face with Heidegger: prolegomena to a metaphysical ethics of things. Philosophy Today 40(1), 132-141.
Harman, G. 2007: Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing. Chicago: Open Court.
Harman, G. 2005: Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Chicago: Open Court.
Thomas, J. 1996: Time, Culture, and Identity, London: Routledge.

DISCUSSANTS: Tom, Ray, Carrie, Steven

Week eight: T., 10/30—The sociology of technology and technoscience studies

Bijker, W.E. 1995. Of Bicycles Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press. READ Chapters 1, 2 and 5 (Introduction, King of the Road, and Conclusion) pp. 1-100 and 269-290.
Law, J. 2002. Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience. Duke Univeristy Press. READ Chapters 1, 2 and 3, (Introduction, Objects, and Subjects) pp. 1-64.
Bijker, W.E. and J. Law, 1992. General Introduction. In Shaping Technology/Building Society. W.E. Bijker and J. Law (ed.) Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, pp 1-14. (Library has electronic copy)
Hughes, T.P. 2002. Edison and electric light. In The Social Shaping of Technology. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman, Second Edition. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 50-63.

Further reading:

Hacking, I. 2001. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, Mass: Harvard.

DISCUSSANTS: Bochay, Kori . . .

Week nine: T., 11/6—Cognitive approaches

Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ingold, T., 2000. The Perception of the Environment. Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge, London. General Introduction, Chapters, 15, 16, 18, and 21, pp 1-7, 294-322, 339-248, 373-391 (Library has electronic copy).
- Ingold, T. 2004. Culture on the ground: the world perceived through the feet. Journal of Material Culture 9(3): 315-340.

Further readings:

Knappett, C. 2005. Thinking through Material Culture. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Malafouris, L. 2004. The cognitive basis of material engagement. Where brain, body and culture conflate. In DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C., and Renfrew, C. (eds.) 2004. Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World. MacDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge, pp. 53-62.

DISCUSSANTS: Bochay, Brad, Christy, Michelle

Week ten: T., 11/13— The question of agency: Anthropological angles

Gell, A. 1998. Art and agency. Oxford: OUP.
Strathern, M. 1999. Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays in persons and Things. London: Athlone Press. READ Chapters 1 (this includes “Chapter 1 Concluded), 2, and 3. (The Ethnographic Effect I and The Ethnographic Effect II, Pre-figured Features, and The Aesthetics of Substance) pp 1-85 and 229-260.

Further Readings:

Osborne, R and J. Tanner (eds), Art’s Agency and Art History. Oxford: Blackwell.
Pinney, C. and N. Thomas (eds), 2001. Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

DISCUSSANTS: Keffie, Heidi, Alex

Guest Discussant: Timothy Webmoor

Week eleven: T., 11/20—Actor-Network-Theory

Callon, M. and J. Law, 1997. After the individual in society. Lessons on collectivity from science, technology and society, Canadian journal of sociology, 22(2), 165-82.
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Further Readings:

Law, J. and J. Hassard, 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell

DISCUSSANTS: Bochay, Clarissa, Colin, Chris

Week twelve: T., 11/27—Design studies

Norman, D.A. 2001. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. READ: Chapters 1 and 7 (The Psychopathology of Everyday Things and User-Centered Design) pp. 1-33 and 187-217.
Norman, D.A. 2005. Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York, Basic Books. READ: Chapters 1, 2 and 3 (Attractive Things Work Better, The Multiple Faces of Emotion and Design and Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective) pp. 17-98.
Petroski, H. 1996. Invention by design: How engineers get from thought to thing. HUP: Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp.1-42.
Shanks, M. and C. Tilley, 1992. Social values, social constraints and material culture: the design of contemporary beer cans. In Re-Constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, pp.172-240.
Sterling, B. 2005 Shaping Things. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT press.

Further Reading from an Architectural Angle

Alexander, C. 1979. The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press.
Alexander, C. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press.

DISCUSSANTS: Ray?, Kori . . .

Week thirteen: T., 12/4—The return to things

Brown, B. 2003. A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brown, B. 2001. Thing Theory. Critical Inquiry 28(1), 1-22.
Domanska, E. 2006. The return to things. Archaeologia Polona 44, 171-185.
Latour, B. 2005b. From realpolitik to dingpolitik – or how to make things public. In Making Things Public–Atmospheres of Democracy (eds B. Latour and P. Weibel). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 14-41
Olsen, B. 2003. Material culture after text: re-membering things. Norwegian Archaeological Review 36 (3): 87–104.
Preda, A. 1999. The turn to things: arguments for a sociological theory of things. The Sociological Quarterly 40(2), 347-366.

DISCUSSANTS: Brad, Christy, Clarissa, Chris

Guest Discussant: TBA